14 January, 2014

Can't wait until May to get a Camargue? You might be in luck. We have two prototype frames that were never built up. Both are 59cm and matte-black powder coated, not green like the production version. One was for an employee who had planned a bike packing trip in South America, but decided to go mountaineering instead. The second was used only to test tire fit. Both come with Grand Cru headsets installed. One has two tiny paint chips on the top tube that we touched up. They are identical to the production frames, except for the color and lack of a top tube decal. Both framesets can be found in our Prototype and Special page.

UPDATE: both are sold.

The Camargue geometry chart can be found here. These frames take tire up to about 2.25". Though you could run fenders with 2.1" tires, we suggest 1.9" tires with fenders for extra clearance. You should actually measure the tire you plan to use if it's very close to the max size we recommend. "Knobby" tires can vary from the listed size. Does the listed width include the knobs?

We also strongly recommend not using fenders with "knobby" tires on any bike. There's too much chance of road debris being thrown into the fender and jamming the wheel; ouch.

Speaking of tires, as with any bike, big tires will require a MTB (47.5mm) chainline. Tires up to about 1.9" (total width) will work with a road chainline, but wider tires may rub the front derailleur. If you want to run road components with wider tires you can usually get away with a longer BB and MTB front derailleur.

We also have a demo 57cm Polyvalent. This was used as a show bike and has a few small scratches. This is one of the last two green Polyvalents. The next batch will be blue.UPDATE: PolyV sold.

6 comments:

I'm confused by the seat-tube measurements on the Camargue. What is the length to the top of the seatpost. The 500mm noted sounds like it will have a ton of seatpost showing, much more than the prototype appeared to have.

As shown in the drawing, the seat tube is measured from the center of the bottom bracket to the intersection of the top of the top tube and the seat tube.

The seat tubes are 60-70mm shorter on these frames then what they would be if we had stuck with our usual horizontal top tube design. This means you will have around 60-70mm more seatpost showing then you would on our other frames.

If you compare the stand over height between the Campeur(the Camargue's big brother) and the Camargue, you will see why did this.

We also strongly recommend not using fenders with "knobby" tires on any bike. There's too much chance of road debris being thrown into the fender and jamming the wheel...

Hmmm... I assume that extends to some of the gnarlier studded tires, like the Schwalbe Winter Marathon? On the one hand, I totally see your point, and am not keen to do another endo (the last time I did that on pavement, I broke my hip). On the other hand, I can't imagine commuting to work through the winter slop without fenders.